Survey for early season public land hunters

[Boogieman1]

I ate a retard sandwhich on the biggest buck of my life in the evening of opening day 2014. Watched that buck all summer and had the perfect set up.ouch! Still hurts.... Had a giant inside of 15 yards, clueless, broadside and didn’t even put tension on the string. Was a rare occurrence around here. Big money in Sept Dove hunting around here which pushes the deer deeper until after dark. That year, was the perfect storm. Every farmer in the county planted Milo. A dove hunters dream come September. Except one farmer to which I had permission who planted alfalfa. The deer flooded to it! Will take what happened to my grave, but awful just awful. Live an learn I guess.

[Bio1]

Eye opening thread! I’ve killed a few good ones on public land prior to the 25th and one on the 28th this past season that were 4.5+. My biggest buck I ever killed I shot on a front on the 11th of October at 10 yards, another good one on the 18th and one in mid September but I can’t remember exact date on that one. As far as aging them, I’m a wildlife biologist by trade and have aged a lot of deer. Three of the 4 I’d relate the success directly to the first cold front of the season dropping the temp considerably and being set up tight to where they were bedded.

Bio1

[1STRANGEWILDERNESS]

I honestly don’t know of many 4.5 yr old bucks shot on public in the areas I’ve lived. I don’t know of many 3.5s either.Ok, crap 2.5s are still far above avg lol. On public I’ve gotten one 3 and one that many thought to be a 4 yr old..dressed just over 200 but never aged. One Was late other was rut. Irrelevant.. I know..

I had my chance last yr at what I believe was a 5 yr old. Oct 13 I think it was.
Bar none the most embarrassing hunt of my lifetime.I feel redemption coming on. Hopefully I’ll be able to add something worthwhile to this conversation bu oct 25.

[Dewey]

I think it might be easier to just ask who actually killed a 4+ year old buck ever. Fact is only a very small percentage of hunters ever have. I would guess that compared to the general hunter population the percentage is higher here among Beast members but it wouldn’t be surprising at all that very few shot them early in the season. Most guys just don’t put much into the early part of the season and take most of their vacation time during the rut. Of course that’s when most of the mature bucks will go down. I’m betting if more guys took off the first two weeks of the season and hunted hard you would see a major shift. Obviously that will never happen since guys won’t give up rut vacation for hot mosquito infested very early season hunts.

Your dealing with an extremely low number of 4+ year old targets in the herd and although it may be doable on opening weekend it gets a WHOLE lot harder after that when they feel the pressure. The earlier the season opens in September the better your odds are to catch them in summer patterns. Throw in an Oct. 1 opener and it just got a whole lot harder. Most guys spend the first three weeks of October chasing around trying to figure out where the bucks are and never really get them patterned. It’s a tough time period. Once the last week of October rolls around they suddenly look like heroes with bucks all over.